1st prize in CRM Causal Inference Challenge for Joris Mooij & team

An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by Joris Mooij of the Informatics Institute, UvA won the first prize in the CRM Causal Inference Challenge 2016.

The task of the challenge was to predict the effects of gene knockouts on several phenotypes for mice, without knowing which gene would be knocked out.

The team used two approaches: one based on human expert knowledge (consulting a biologist and a medical researcher specialized in inflammation associated anemia), the other using an automatic, purely data-driven, causal prediction algorithm that was specifically developed for this challenge by the team. Both approaches were awarded the first prize for their scientific novelty and because they gave the most accurate predictions.

The team members are Tom Claassen, Sara Magliacane, Philip Versteeg, Stephan Bongers, Thijs van Ommen, Patrick Forre, Renée van Amerongen (Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences) and Lucas van Eijk (Radboud University Medical Center).

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